Tecno Unveils New Telephoto Camera: 50% Smaller Module with 1-9X True Continuous Zoom

MANILA, PHILIPPINES – Tecno Mobile has revealed a new camera innovation for its upcoming flagship smartphones in a video presentation on its official YouTube channel. Specifically, the reveal focuses on solving a critical industry challenge: packing powerful zoom performance into a sleek, compact design. The innovation integrates cutting-edge telephoto technologies that work together to deliver both reduced size and seamless, high-quality zoom.

Dual-Mirror Reflect Telephoto

Kicking off the reveal, Tecno (in partnership with Samsung and Largon) highlighted its Dual-Mirror Reflect Telephoto – which uses folded optics to tackle the growing bulk of smartphone telephoto lenses. By precisely applying high-transmittance and highly reflective coatings to lenses, light is bent to shorten the optical path—cutting the module’s length by 50% and height by 10% compared to traditional periscope designs.

This Dual-Mirror Reflect element of the camera also features an annular aperture that creates a distinctive “doughnut” bokeh effect, while boosting image brightness and signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) for clearer low-light photos.

Seamless Continuous Optical Zoom

Building directly on this compact design, the presentation detailed how the camera system addresses a common pain point with smartphone zoom: sharpness drops at intermediate focal lengths. Most devices rely on multiple lenses and digital cropping to cover wide ranges, but Tecno’s innovation uses an Alvarez optical architecture with two free-form elements that shift just a few millimeters perpendicular to the optical axis.

This enables true lossless optical zoom across a 1-9X range—delivering high-resolution images at every focal length—all within the same streamlined module as the folded optics design.

Tecno confirmed this camera innovation will be at the heart of its future flagship devices, allowing the brand to combine sleek, compact design with top-tier imaging performance in one unified package.

Source: Tecno Mobile Youtube Channel (Video 1, Video 2)